Beancounters Rule Radio:Ignore/underserve markets they do not valueand/or are antagonistic to:

"Despite their numbers
[24% of the U.S. population] , Cultural
Creatives tend to believe that few people share their
values. This is partly
because their views are rarely represented
in the mainstream media, which is
mostly owned and operated according to the Modern
world view. Little of what they read gives them
any evidence of their huge numbers."

"It's not too far off to
say that Moderns see the
world through the
same filters as Time magazine."

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble
for the safety of my country. . . .
corporations
have been enthroned and an era
of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power
of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the
prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and
the Republic is destroyed."

" ... history of advertising
-- from the simple handmaiden task selling
already-manufactured goods
to its present role of creating industries
and redesigning a
world's folkways to meet the needs of commerce."

"Our representative government
is perhaps more representative than it has ever
been before in history.
It is not necessarily representative per capita, but it most
surely is ad
valorem.
If you like philosophical
problems, here is one for you:
should each human being's
vote register alike, as the lawbooks pretend and as some say the founders
of our nation desired? Or should a vote be weighed according to the wisdom,
the power, and the influence--that is, the money-- of the voter?

That is a philosophical problem
for you, you understand; not for me.
I am a pragmatist, and a
pragmatist, moreover,
on the payroll of Fowler
Schocken [Advertising Agency]"

AMMO: What to say when
someone says "What's the problem?"Introduction ... basic
problem is in the "culture war", the old guard are busily closing off the
channels of communication ...Actual Arguments in the debate
... (aka "the dirt")

The bottom line is that in a democracy,
you have a right to matter to those who's decisions affect your
ability to become who you want to be.It does not matter whether those decisions are your neighbors, an elected
official, a bureaucrat or an officer of a private corporation.

"The Media is the Lifeblood of a Free Society"

Newt Gingrich1994

Media, and especially radio (because it is so accessible
to so many people) serves as that vital feedback link between those who
make policy and those who suffer from policy. When that link
becomes tainted by overly concentrated control, it is tinted by that ownership's
agenda. The policymaking then gets further and further out of touch with
reality as the decisionmakers are divorced from the consequences of their
decisions. This is what happened to the King of England that lead to the
American Revolution.

Democracy is run by those who show up.If your story, your values and your needs are not heard, not acknowledged
by those in power, you are going to get stomped!

"Freedom of speech does not exist in theabstract. On the contrary, the right to speak can flourish only if it is allowed to operate in aneffective forum -- whether it be a public park or a radio frequency. For in the absence of aneffective means of communications, the right to speak would ring hollow indeed. And, inrecognition of these principles, we have consistently held that the First Amendment embodies,not only the abstract right to be free from censorship, but also the right of the individual toutilize an appropriate and effective medium for the expression of his views."

Big Business bought Big Brother via the campaign
financing disaster of the late 20th century.Due to the preposterous prices of a run for elected office, the circle
of people who run for office or have influence on those who run for office
has continually narrowed to the 2% of America that controls over 40% of
America's assets.
Furthermore, with "public-private-partnerships" and such, this 2% of
America leverages public decisions in their favor. Regulatory bodies commonly
regulate more in the interests of those they regulate than the public interest.
The FCC is normally no different.
Even worse, media is encouraged to do a bad job covering election
campaigns: The worse coverage a candidate gets, the more the candidate
is encouraged to purchase ads to make up for the bad coverage!

You may find yourself wondering either:

a) Why does most media leave me feeling like a "Stranger
In A Strange Land" and/or ...

b) why are there any unserved people at all? Why has not
the market system reached out to these people? Why are 13,000 people going
to the considerable trouble of asking the FCC for a frequency to
start their own radio stations?

Many people assume that if "the market" has not produced
programming for someone, it is because that person belongs to a group that
is not worth programming for.

NOTE: This is an expansion
upon the topic covered on the home page ...There's more on other subjects below ...

Do you find yourself both "liberal" and
"conservative ... or reject the binary choices as worthless?

This research has found three major groupings of values in America,
the two that are commonly thought of as "liberal" and "conservative" ...
and a third emerging culture referred to as "Cultural Creatives"
that
combines aspects of both.

"Cultural Creatives" are generally well educated, well paid and hungry
for news and culture ... yet have very few radio or TV programs designed
for them ... because the Cultural Creatives are not making the
decisions and are not acknowledged as a market to be served.

"Despite their numbers [24% of U.S.] , Cultural Creatives
tend to believe that few people share their values. This is partly because
their views are rarely represented in the mainstream media, which is mostly owned and operated according to the
Modern world view. Little of what they read gives them any evidence
of their huge numbers."

"It's not too far off to say that Moderns see the world
through the same filters as Time magazine."

Paul H. Ray...

"A major change has been growing in American culture. It is a comprehensive
shift in values, world views, and ways of life. It appeals to nearly one-fourth
of American adults, or 44 million persons.
People who follow this new path are on the leading edge of several
kinds of cultural change. They are interested in new kinds of products
and services, and they often respond to advertising and marketing in unexpected
ways.

This emerging group has been labeled Cultural Creatives by American
LIVES of San Francisco. In numerous surveys and focus groups, we have seen
that Americans live in three different worlds of meaning and valuing. Each
world creates distinctive contexts for a wide array of consumer purchases,
political convictions, and civic behavior. And within each world are class
divisions that create different subgroups that share the same broader views.

The first world view is Traditionalism. It is the belief system for
about 29 percent of Americans (56 million adults) who might also be called
Heartlanders. In America, traditionalism often takes the form of country
folks rebelling against big-city slickers. Heartlanders believe in a nostalgic
image of small towns and strong churches that defines the Good Old American
Ways. That image may owe as much to John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies
as to any historical reality, but for them it is a powerful reminder of
how things ought to be.

The second world view is Modernism. It holds sway over about 47 percent
of Americans, or 88 million adults. Modernism emerged 450 years ago as
the governing world view of the urban merchant classes and other creators
of the modern economy. It defines modern politicians, military leaders,
scientists, and intellectuals. Modernists place high value on personal
success, consumerism, materialism, and technological rationality. It's
not too far off to say that Moderns see the world through the same filters
as Time magazine.

The third and newest world view goes beyond Modernism. Its current adherents
are the Cultural Creatives, who claim 24 percent of U.S. adults (44 million).
Trans-Modernism began with esoteric spiritual movements such as 19th-century
American Transcendentalism. It gained strength as Western intellectuals
discovered the diversity and coherence of other religions and philosophies.
It caught fire in the 1960s, as millions of young people joined "movements"
for human potential, civil rights, peace, jobs, social justice, ecology,
and equal rights for women.

Conservative commentators often believe that each of the social movements
listed above exists in isolation and is important only to a few. But from
women's issues to environmentalism, the emblematic values of the 1960s
are being embraced by more and more Americans. Few in the media recognize
it, but these ideas are coalescing into a new and coherent world view.
When Cultural Creatives look at Modernism, they see an antique system that
is noisily shaking itself to pieces."

The majority of radio programming decisions are carried
out by Modernist oriented stockholder corporate beancounters, or by the
Heartlanders that populate the Christian Coalition etc. etc. The Modernists
and Heartlanders are either uninterested in serving the Cultural Creative
market, or outright hostile.Patrick Buchanan was often referring to Cultural Creatives
when he said that America was "in a cultural war."

Ironically, much of Buchanan's distaste for NAFTA and
GATT's corporate takeover of the world's resources finds a sympathetic
audience in Cultural Creatives. Either way, there is little programming
to cover the convergence of these cultures.

This is the source of
the discomfortwith the condition of American
Radio today.

Argument:There is no relationship
between ownership (diversity of decision-makers) and programming (decisions).Ownership=Programming:Opposition
to the Low Power Radio Service (that would open thousands of new slots
on America's FM dial) say that "you'll have to prove there's a relationship
between diversity of ownership and diversity of viewpoints."PROOF: ITEM:It's
a White, White World on Network TV , Washington
Post, July 13, 1999; Page A1.
Excerpt: "Here's one thing you won't be seeing much of
when the big TV networks
roll out their new sitcoms and drama series this fall: black people.
In what is likely to be the whitest television season in a generation,
not one of the 26 new shows set to debut on ABC, CBS, NBC
and Fox will star an African American. Blacks, along with
Hispanics and Asian Americans,
will occupy few secondary roles as well."

In
spite of a more diverse US population, the electronic media
ownership
and programming has become continually less representative since the
1996 Telecommunications Act that was a keystone to the Republican "Contract
With America."

FCC Commissioner
Gloria Tristani has noted that, "less than 3% of radio stations are
minority-owned, and that number is dropping. On the more desirable FM band,
black-owned stations dropped 26% and Hispanic-owned stations dropped 9%
between 1995 and 1997. Those numbers mean that existing minority broadcasters
are selling out and they're not being replaced."

The June 3rd. 1999 PR Newswire reports that "BIA
Companies estimates radio station revenues at $13.8 billion for 1998,
up 12.6% from $12.3 billion for 1997. ... At the end of 1998, the number
of unique radio station owners had dropped from 5,222 controlling 10,246
stations, to 4,241 controlling 10,636 commercial stations. Consolidation
has led to more efficient revenue generation and cost cutting measures,
thus increasing cash flow margins to the 35%-45% range for public groups.
BIA estimates that more than half, or about 54%, of the estimated $13.8
billion of radio advertising dollars generated in 1998 were attributed
to the 25 largest radio owners. The top three billers alone (Chancellor
Media/Capstar, CBS Radio/Infinity Broadcasting and Clear Channel/Jacor
Communications combined) accounted for almost 35% of total industry revenues."

WPBR 1340AM had a very popular liberal talk show host, Elliott Maartens.

WPBR had conservative talk show hosts, but they were not as popular.

Not because there were not conservatives in Florida, but because there
were already several other conservative radio stations that had
better signals.

There was only ONE other station with a devout self-labelled liberal
(Jack Cole), and that was later
in the day.

Maartens, however, was not fiscally viable; we could not get advertisers
to purchase airtime on his show with enough volume to convince management
to replace him with another liberal when he left.

This is why moderate to liberal views are almost
always heard on donation-stations and rarely on commercial stations;
those who have enough money to buy advertising often will not support a
"liberal" talk show!

But when a community radio station goes straight to its listeners for donations,
the listeners become the primary constituents for the station's
management ... cutting out the middlemen as topic and ideology filters
(pied pipers).

The NAB stations could have put the Techno stations out of business
by simply ... playing Techno music! The large full-power "blowtorch"
stations have a superior sound and reach ... if they had simply served
that market, the "pirates" would not have had community support.

Rather than compete, the NAB stations preferred to use the taxpayer's resources
to stop the competition and enforce a less diverse selection.

There are many proven cases of high-powered legal radio stations causing
problems, yet the FAA is not calling for the end of commercial FM broadcasting.

Radio is more than just a business ... it is a vital part of a vibrant
democracy.

Advertising
"Blacklisting" is destroying the economic viability of radio owned
by or programmed for minority Americans. The NTIA study showed that "The
dictates that no time be bought on Urban [black] or Spanish stations and
the lower rates paid to these stations when buys were made, reduced
their revenues by an average of 63 percent."

Another study quoted
a NY Times article, "'Your listeners don't buy our cars,'' a Chicago radio
executive recalled being
told by an official of a luxury-car maker who had just rebuffed an
advertising sales pitch. 'They steal them.'''

Now that there are no real restrictions to corporate concentrated ownership
of multiple radio stations "we
all are the other guy" [that you used to switch to]!!

Argument:Public Radio is
here to serve anyone not served by commercial or religious radio.

If only that were so! (See links in narrative above).

Public Radio pushing out minority third-party candidates from their debates.

Public Radio double standards (will air shows sponsored by large corporations,
but not by a Union).

Public Radio stations violating the founding documents of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting (goal, diversity, not duplication of commercially
viable classical music services).

Public Radio sponsoring near-worship of Wall Street culture with little
in the way of warning of its downsides.

Kiddie Games

Marketplace

Reading the Dow Jones Average instead of Consumer Price Index on the radio.

Most serious investors do not buy or sell based on one
day's rise or fall in a stock. They research the company, then buy and
hold, perhaps rolling the dividend over into more stock from the same company.
Since the stock report serves no real purpose for investors, this suggests
that it is a subtle way to suggest that the fortunes of the Fortune 500
are more important than your fortunes, the "Doug
Jones
Average" (what it costs to live).

Argument:If you don't like
it, turn off the radio, get on the Internet.

Radio station's use of the public resources, the airwaves, is protected
at taxpayer expense (The Federal Communication Commission, the Federal
Marshalls).

Argument:The media is already
too beholden to special interests, they should be objective.

"Objectivity" as a standard for media is a Public Relations move from the
early 20th century and is a myth.

In the 19th century, newspapers were more like magazines are now.
The "Penny Press" and the lack of any real competitive alternate technology
for news delivery meant that newspapers were openly and honestly partisan
and opinionated.
After radio became a competitor, newspapers began dying off.
The ones that were left realized that they needed to create the appearance
of being something for everyone and alienate no-one, and so the idea
of an "objective" press was invented as a sales ploy.

America is NOT a "melting pot", rather America is a "Brunswick Stew" where
all the components retain their individual identity and characteristic
culture, values, interests and stories.

You have the right to matter to those whose vote affects your
life. If your story is not heard by those who vote, whether your fellow
citizens, or the board of directors or bureaucrats or legislators, then
your needs are likely ignored.